DALLAS — Chacon Autos is leaning on more than 50 years of experience to navigate through some of the most difficult conditions ever seen in the buy-here, pay-here dealership industry.

Co-owner Gary Chaney stressed that utilizing online auctions more this year is going to be crucial to finding vehicles to fill inventories at his five Dallas-Ft. Worth area stores and another store in San Antonio.

"If you ask any used car dealer or buy-here pay-here dealer, anybody, they'll say it's getting tougher," Chaney pointed out during a recent interview with SubPrime Auto Finance News.

"At this time last year, maybe through June, you could find anything at a pretty great price," he recounted. "Right now, it's starting to get tougher and tougher to find low-mileage, good used cars. It's partly because the manufacturers didn't make a lot of 2009s and they're not making a lot of 2010s, either, and the 2008s have a lot of miles on them right now."

Chacon Auto's inventory formula has worked for decades and recently helped lead the company to being listed among the Inc. 5000 as one of the fastest growing companies nationwide. The company's inventory predominantly includes vehicles with less than 40,000 miles and a remaining factory warranty. The brand mix ranges from domestics such as Chevrolet, Dodge and Ford to foreign nameplates such as Nissan and Hyundai.

To find these units, Chaney indicated that his operation has sometimes purchased through online auctions that shipped cars to Texas from places such as Colorado and Arizona. Having vehicles coming from out of state isn't unfamiliar. He remembered back in 1993 when Chacon Autos bought 800 Mitsubishi units from a Florida auction.

"We try to find good deals for us and the customer. If you've got a car that's bringing in way more than it should at auction, we stay away from those," Chaney noted.

"If some auction is running a lot of cars in one spot, the price is going to be down. We look around to find the best prices," he continued.

"But recently, we bought very few at auction (near Dallas) because there were few that fit our needs," Chaney went on to say.

Besides maintaining inventory that used to be on a 28-day turn cycle but now is closer to 45 days, Chaney explained how he's also now leaning on family experience to work through the financial maze that's so crucial to the company's success.

Chaney recalled what the situation was like when his father, William, who founded the company, was selling vehicles in the late 1970s and early 1980s. At that time, soaring interest rates came on the heels of spiking oil prices. The wicked combination cut into margins severely, Chaney said.

Nowadays, Chaney described the financial hardships that are hitting today's consumers and often how it's tied somehow to housing.

"We are seeing a lot of customers come in who are six months or eight months past due on their house, and they've lost their job in last six months," Chaney explained to SubPrime Auto Finance News. "Previously, we could have traded customers every two years or so; now they're saying, ‘I'm a little concerned about the future so I'm going to hold off for a while.'

"But we've still got good bases of customers," he added. "It's a little slow right now because they're having a real tough time with their houses. That's what's hurting us."

To ensure the slowing of business doesn't grind the company to a halt, Chaney stressed that Chacon Autos is recommitting to its strategy that helped it prosper for more than 50 years. Chaney contends that "it's all about customer service."

"We have a lot of customers refer more customers," Chaney noted. "Where they work, they'll refer co-workers to us because they've been treated well. Even when they've been past due with us, we've treated them fairly, like real people. Everybody has problems so our customers say we were treated fairly at Chacon Autos.

"We're not out here to gouge anyone with high prices," he went on to highlight. "We treat them like they're part of the family. We give them good value for their money. They don't feel like they've been taken. They feel like they've got a good product when it's been purchased from us. They understand we're being fair."

It is perhaps not surprising that treating customers like family is such an important business factor at the BHPH stores. The company has been a family business for so long. Gary Chaney and his brother, Darrell, are co-owners of the company, and their mother, Christine, still works in the operation six days a week. Gary and Darrell Chaney each have two children working in the business, too.

"I think our whole family works hard," Gary Chaney said. "It's rewarding. It's nice to be able to finance automobiles for people that legitimately have some troubles."

While the majority of the company consists of buy-here, pay-here dealerships, Chacon Autos also operates one franchise store. Chacon Suzuki opened in December 2004, broadening the company's inventory and financing opportunities.

"We were losing some customers to new-car stores," Chaney explained. "We were trading our customers up, but once you got to a certain point they felt like they wanted a new car and we were losing those customers.

"The Suzuki store also gave us some other lenders," he went on to say. "If we had a customer who had negative equity we couldn't do or they had a lot of references outside of Dallas or San Antonio, it gave us a little extra leeway to sell to a wider range of customers."

With 50 years already in the books, a strong customer base and a successful business model, Chaney insisted that Chacon Autos is looking toward an even brighter future. As recently as 2008, the company finished with $80 million in sales and $90 million in notes receivable.

"I don't know what would cause us not to go another 50 years. We have no plans to do anything but what we're doing," he concluded.